Bethlehem Shepherds... and Angels

My first teaching job was at an international school in Jerusalem, Israel, where I taught for seven years. Jerusalem is about 15 minutes by car from Bethlehem, the town where Jesus was born that first Christmas Eve.

I haven’t been in Bethlehem for a long time - ever since I lived in Jerusalem, in fact, when I was in my twenties. So I don’t know how traffic is these days. But when I lived there, a person could quickly get to Jerusalem by bus or car from Bethlehem. 

From time to time, I had students who lived in or near Bethlehem. 

One year, I received a very interesting composition from a girl whose parents worked at an orphanage on the outskirts of Bethlehem ... It was her take on what happened that first Christmas Eve... when angels appeared to a group of shepherds not far from where she lived. 

I was really taken by what she wrote - and her accompanying photos - so I asked her if I could keep it... 

Here’s what she wrote:

“Shepherds’ Field has been left more or less like it was when the angels came and sang on Christmas night. A Catholic Church and a YMCA summer camp are where the shepherds used to graze their sheep. 

I think that the angels picked a perfect place to sing. The valley makes a perfect giant natural amphitheater. I live at the place where the pictures are taken from. All day we can hear the boys, sheep and donkeys all the way across the valley. The angels must have sounded very beautiful on that Christmas night. 

I do not think that the book Ben Hur places the fields in the right place. The book says that people in the town did not hear any of the noise from the angels, but I think they would have heard the angels. As you can see from the picture, the place where the stable was, was not  far from the Shepherds’ Field and near the top of the amphitheater.”

When I first read this, and looked at the accompanying pictures, I was totally blown away! The town of Bethlehem is at the top right. How many times must she have sat overlooking the valley and thought about that first Christmas Eve.

It was such a personal, insightful explanation!